


the sea has undone me

by fliptomybside



Category: Dunkirk (2017)
Genre: Breathplay, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2018-12-11 17:29:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11719089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fliptomybside/pseuds/fliptomybside
Summary: Post-war, Tommy loses himself. Alex finds him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is FULLY [Em's](http://fullstopmgnt.tumblr.com) fault. Please go yell at her/with us. [Hannah](http://harrybasquiat.tumblr.com) read this over for me and is wonderful. Please heed the warnings in the tags! Title from Anne Sexton's A Self-Portrait in Letters.

He’s in Brighton this time. It’s odd how things turn out, what Tommy finds the most comfort in these days. He used to think he’d never want to look at the sea again, but it draws him back in, over and over again, constant and relentless.

Brighton’s far enough south that he doesn’t know anyone, and it’s touristy enough that he can hide in the crowd, faceless and in plain sight. He wonders if anyone can tell. If they can see inside him. The things he wants, the ways he’s fucked up and let people die. The ways he’s failed. 

Tommy swallows when a little girl runs past him, brushing the fabric of his trousers as she goes. She barely comes up to his waist, and he watches her go, hair blonde and curling wildly in the sea salt air. The crowd swallows her up just as she grasps her mum’s hand, and Tommy feels a pang in his chest.

It’s not something he’ll ever have. He trips and almost loses his balance at the thought, adrenaline rushing through his veins as he rights himself and hurries along, hopes no one noticed his misstep. It’s not even like he wanted it—before. But now that he knows how out of reach it is, a small person that’s half him, half the love of his life, he finds himself wanting it. 

He’s not sure where he’s headed. He never is, now, but he finds himself in a relatively empty pub, slides into a seat at the bar, and has whiskey in his hand before he can stop himself. 

The bar top’s sticky. He can feel the way it grabs onto his shirt when he leans his elbows against it, and he winces internally, careful to keep his face blank. It’s safe. No use offending the locals and drawing attention to himself. He swirls the whiskey around in his glass and sips at it slowly. It’s like he’s not even there, after a bit. Tommy glances around, doesn’t recognize a single face, and no one even looks in his direction.

_Why would they,_ he thinks, downing the rest of it. 

“Get you another, mate?” The bartender asks, and Tommy hesitates, then nods. It’s not like he has anywhere to be. 

-

It’s past one by the time he drags himself out. Tommy blinks against the inky darkness, waits for his eyes to adjust, but it doesn’t happen. The alcohol’s buzzing in his veins, three whiskeys deep, warming him from the inside out even though Tommy knows it’s cold out, May in England too early for any kind of pleasant weather.

The streets are empty. Of course they are, he thinks, moving on autopilot, not having to worry about tripping over or bumping into anyone. He feels naked. On edge, like the sky’ll drop down on him if he breathes too hard or moves to slowly. He picks up the pace, and it’s quiet enough that he can hear the beating of his own pulse. 

He ends up on the beach. 

He always fucking ends up here. After, when he went home for a bit, he thought he’d never go back. He never wanted to smell the salt or feel the grit of sand all over his body again. It was hard to even shower, some days, because he couldn’t stand the feeling of being wet. His mum treated him like he was made of glass, and everyone else just followed suit. Laughed too loudly at things that weren’t funny, smiled too hard at Tommy when he walked into a room, made aborted moves to hug him (mum) or pat him on the back (dad). 

It was claustrophobic after a while. He lasted six months before he took off, assuring his parents earnestly that he was fine, just wanted to see the world now that it was at his feet again. 

Tommy thinks she cried harder when he left the second time than when he did the first.

And for all that it filled him with dread, heavy like a rock in the pit of his stomach, made his pulse race and his mouth dry, it made him feel alive again. Like the adrenaline thrumming through his body and the phantom screams of the bombs and the flashes of green eyes in his brain, wide and scared, were the only things that made sense anymore. 

He’s knee deep in the water before he even realizes it, his feet numb and boots heavy. He curses under his breath when he thinks about how long it’ll take them to dry out again. 

Tommy’s not sure how long he stands there and lets the waves hit him over and over again. It’s rhythmic and soothing and terrifying all at once. He’s not sure if he wants to run away screaming, back into his mum’s arms, or if he wants it to swallow him up, once and for all. Penance for his sins. 

It’s a bit sick, the way the weight of his wet clothes sticking to his skin grounds him, gives everything a clarity that’s elusive most of the time. It’s a double-edged sword, though, because it makes the loneliness acute and impossible to ignore. 

Maybe loneliness isn’t the right word. Tommy doesn’t know how to be around most people these days, so it’s hard to miss them. But he feels the isolation all the same, pressing down on him from all angles, like he’s simultaneously invisible and laid bare. 

-

It’s almost light by the time he trudges back to his flat, the smell of chip grease filling his nose as he approaches. He can’t smell much anymore; he’s not sure what did it, exactly, but the only thing that registers is the salt air, but the smell of oil is so strong that it cuts through. 

Tommy never pictured this. Living above a chip shop by the sea and working in the kitchen to pay his rent. Not when he was at school, and not when he was trapped underwater, lungs screaming for air. 

His fingers are numb when he fumbles the key out of his pocket, and he peels his boots and socks off before he steps inside and makes his way up the stairs. 

The smell’s not as bad upstairs, at least. It’s present but faint, and Tommy’s almost used to it at this point. 

He falls into bed with his clothes still on, and he’ll hate himself for it later. It’ll take days for his mattress to dry out, if it ever really does, but he’s tired down to his bones. 

It’s almost comforting now, the damp. Tommy stares up at the ceiling and focuses in on the faint water stains. Maybe he’s a masochist, or maybe it’s some kind of perverted coping mechanism, but he keeps finding himself leaning into it, spending too much time in the bath, trying to hold his breath underwater for as long as he can.

It’ll be the death of him, probably. He bites the inside of his mouth until he tastes copper and thinks about all the men that waded into the sea and never came back. All the people that died instead of him, all the people who were brave enough to go out on their on terms. They weren’t cowards, not like Tommy was. Is. He’s still a coward, still can’t let himself walk into the ocean past his knees, still can’t make himself stay underwater until he blacks out.

This is what he thinks about now. 

His pants are scratchy against his skin. It itches, a combination of wool and salt sticking to the hairs on his legs. He doesn’t feel drunk anymore, but everything feels swimmy and far off. It’s dangerous, letting his mind start to wander. He thinks about the train. The way Alex’s eyelashes smudged against his cheek. The way he couldn’t stop looking at him, even as he was afraid of getting caught. 

He did get caught, eventually. That’s the heart of it. The fucking mess that Tommy’s gotten himself in, thinking about a boy who might not even be alive anymore, alone in his bed, the ghost of Alex’s hands on him.

Tommy’d never—never thought about someone else like that. Not really. And now it’s all he can think about. The weight of Alex’s body against his, the smell of his skin, the way Alex crushed everything out of him, from the air in his lungs to the fear buzzing through his veins.

He’s hard just at the memory of it. 

He curls his hands into fists and squeezes his eyes shut, like if he blanks out and digs his fingernails into his skin hard enough, it’ll go away and he won’t want it anymore.

It fucking figures that hell on earth would bring him the only thing that’s ever settled him. 

Tommy knows it’s not something he can have, but it doesn’t stop his brain from playing it back. Alex’s pupils blown out, his lips bitten red and trembling. The way he dug his hands first into Tommy’s hips, harsh even through the layers of fabric, then they were at Tommy’s throat, gentle when he kissed him and tightening slowly as Tommy’s breath got faster and faster. 

He came like that, the first time, with nothing but Alex’s hands at his neck and his lungs devoid of air.

-

Tommy’s dead on his feet that afternoon, enough that he doesn’t even feel the splashes of hot oil on his hands. He’ll feel it later in the shower, the blisters bubbling up on his skin, but now he can barely keep standing, swaying on his feet with exhaustion and the edges of a hangover at his temples. 

He tunes it all out. The yelling of the bloke working the register and the squalling baby somewhere in the front of the shop, the murmur of families taking an early summer holiday. 

He knows it’s idyllic, somewhere in the depths of his brain, but it all feels unreal. Like he’s there, but not really there at the same time, everything just rolling off of him, people looking through him, oil burning his skin, but none of it sinking in. 

It’s all right. He’ll get up the courage someday, the courage he didn’t have when it mattered, and he’ll keep walking, past his knees and his waist and then his neck, he’ll let his lungs burn up and fill with water and—

“Tommy,” his landlord, his boss, roars, and it freezes him up, fills his head with static and his body with thumping adrenaline, relentless and all consuming and it’s like what he imagines a heart attack feels like. Not pain, necessarily, but the frantic racing of his heart and the knowledge deep down that something inside him is _wrongwrongwrong_ and irreparably broken. 

He doesn’t remember any of his shift after that. He ends up on the beach, like he always does. It just usually takes alcohol to get him there, like sober he hovers close but not quite close enough. 

He’s sober tonight, but his brain’s still buzzing, full of static and neurons firing in all different directions, telling him to run and stay still and get down and get out. 

The sand’s cold and unrelenting and Tommy feels dizzy so he lays down, spreads his limbs out and wriggles his numb toes inside his boots. They’re still damp from the night before and the sweat from his shift. Right disgusting, he knows, and his mum would never let them inside the house, but he’s so far away from her that she might as well be in some other universe. 

The sound of the waves is hypnotizing. It’s rhythmic and soothing and takes the place of the static filling up his skull, makes the world tilt back on its axis enough that Tommy can close his eyes.

It lulls him to sleep as the tide comes in and licks at his boots, and he dreams. 

_“’s like that, is it?” Alex breathes above him, pressing down on him experimentally, and Tommy’s face flames, caught out, but his dick twitches anyway, and he knows Alex can feel it when he smirks and grinds his hips against Tommy’s._

_“I like it,” he whispers against Tommy’s lips before he bites at them, slides his tongue into Tommy’s mouth, his breath harsh against Tommy’s cheek._

_It’s dark and quiet and all Tommy can hear is their heavy breathing and the rustle of their bodies pressing against each other._

_His veins are filled with pure terror, intoxicating and inescapable, because they’ll be caught out and he’ll never be able to explain this, not the way Alex has a hand down the front of his trousers or the other hand at the base of his throat, intermittently stroking the oil covered skin and pressing down just enough that Tommy gets short of breath._

Tommy wakes up. There’s water in his ears and his clothes are soaked through and the sun’s starting to bath everything in gray, early light. He’s aching in his trousers but he doesn’t let himself touch. _No, he thinks. Not anymore. That’s not you._

It’s a filthy fucking lie, though. It is him, he thinks, and he wishes he could just sink into the sand, let that swallow him up. Maybe it would be kinder than drowning. A gentler suffocation. Maybe no one would ever find him, and he’d never have to own up to how fucked up the inside of his head is. The things he wants. 

He walks home in a daze. It’s like deja vu except this is how he spends every day. 

-

He turns the shower water up as hot as it’ll go and stands there, still clothed, until the bathroom’s completely steamed up. If he shuts his eyes, he can imagine he’s back home and ten years old again, his life stretching out in front of him in a way that isn’t an endless slog to an invisible finish line. 

His clothes are impossibly heavy when he strips them off, the dark fabric rippled with white salt lines from sweat and the sea. 

The water’s scalding on his skin when he steps into the shower. It makes his toes curl, feeling coming back to them in pins and needles, sharp and unrelenting. It grounds him in the way only pain does. Tommy watches the water swirl down the drain, faint shadows of sand circling it and threatening to clog the pipes and bring down the wrath of his landlord. 

He watches his skin go from white to pink to red, a sure sign that he’s still alive, blood rushing to the surface under his skin. He scrubs until he feels raw all over and the water runs cold.

-

He sleeps for half the morning, blessedly dreamless, until his stomach wakes him up, curling in on itself with hunger. He knows he should probably stop in to see his boss, smooth over any feathers he ruffled yesterday, but the thought of slinking in and begging for forgiveness for whatever transgressions he committed sets his teeth on edge.

Tommy’s stomach growls loudly in the quiet of his flat as he rummages through his drawers for dry trousers, goosebumps prickling his skin as he pulls them on. 

It’s pushing towards warm when he makes his way down the stairs and outside, the sun beating down with a kind of relentlessness that Tommy isn’t used to. It makes him feel caught out. Naked, like everyone can see what he dreamed about last night. 

Everyone goes on around him, harried parents and shrieking seagulls, but Tommy can’t shake the prickle at the back of his neck, like he’s let his guard down and any second now he’s going to have to pay for it. 

He walks the streets until his feet lose feeling again. As long as he keeps moving, trudging forward with a kind of ruthlessness that makes his lungs burn, his mind stays blank. As blank as it ever does, at least. 

There’s no line at the ice cream place that Tommy usually avoids like the plague, with its long lines and sticky, crying children, a reminder of the childhood he left behind and the life he’ll never have. He gets a vanilla cone and lets it melt on his tongue. It’s sickly sweet. Tommy can’t remember the last time he had an ice cream, but it tastes like painful nostalgia and makes his teeth ache.

-

The pub’s dark when he ducks in, just crowded enough that he goes unnoticed, but not so crowded that it’s hard for him to get a glass of whiskey in his hands. Tommy swirls it around, watches the liquid until he starts to get dizzy and has to blink everything back into focus.

The bar top is scratched up, littered with names and in one spot, fuck carved in painstakingly elegant script.

“You look lonely,” a soft voice says to Tommy’s right, and he can’t suppress the way his pulse ratchets up and his mouth goes desert dry. 

He tries to school his face into a neutral expression before he turns, but he’s not sure he succeeds, because the face of the girl leaning on the bar next to him drops noticeably. 

Tommy forces a smile and hopes it looks real. She’s pretty, brown hair curling softly to her shoulders, and a dress that’s cut low enough in the chest that he can see a shadow of cleavage. 

“Might be,” he says, and his voice is rusty with disuse, but she smiles broadly at him, her teeth white and blinding in the dim light. 

-

He goes home with her. He almost doesn’t. He’s sweating bullets and doesn’t know what to do with his hands and can’t seem to put one foot in front of the other and it’s a shit idea, he can feel it down to his bones but he does it anyway, prays with everything he has that the alcohol in his bloodstream will be enough to get him through this without freezing up or losing his head.

Her flat is bigger than Tommy’s. It’s clean and it looks lived in.

“My flatmate’s down the hall,” she whispers, and Tommy realizes that he doesn’t know her name. 

“All right,” he says lowly when she pulls him into her room by the wrist, presses him against the door, and kisses down his neck, lips soft and dry and not enough.

-

There aren’t any water stains on her ceiling. _Figures,_ Tommy thinks, she’s in a nice part of town, and doesn’t live above a shop. Her landlord probably fixes the heat when she asks and doesn’t whinge on about the plumbing. 

She’s curled up on the pillow next to him, and Tommy doesn't feel anything. His heart’s beating slow and dull in his chest, and this doesn’t feel like he thought it would.

He flushes thinking about her balanced on his hips and the way she winced slightly and tried to cover it up when he dug his fingers into hers a little too hard. All he can fucking think about is Alex. Inside him and all over him, the pain and the way his sweaty skin against Tommy’s back was the only thing that’s been able to bring him back down to earth, to quiet everything in his head.

It doesn’t make any sense. Tommy knows this, knows that Alex is selfish, with ideas Tommy can’t wrap his head around, but it he owns it in a way that Tommy can’t. He wonders where Alex is. If he’s got a girl in his bed tonight, if he ever thinks about Tommy—about what Tommy likes, he thinks, cheeks warming in the dark. 

He doesn’t let himself think about whether or not he’ll ever be able to get off without it. Without Alex.

He ends up stumbling out quietly just before dawn. He pulls the blankets up over her bare shoulders before he goes, shrugs his trousers and shirt back on before he slinks down the hallway and out the door. 

-

He goes to a different pub the next night and curses himself for going home with her and scratching another place that he can hide off the list. 

He gets his whiskey on the rocks this time and lets the glass sweat against his fingers, slippery and familiar, everything he craves and hides from. 

All he can smell is chip grease, and he fucking hates how pervasive it is, hates how much he hates it and the way he wants to crawl out of his skin just to escape the way his heart starts racing every time a chair scrapes against the floor or the door slams shut.

“I’ll have what he’s got, thanks, mate,” someone says from just behind Tommy’s left ear, so close that their breath hits his skin, and Tommy jerks forward.

They put a hand on Tommy’s shoulder, fingers digging in with a harsh familiarity, and Tommy knows. Knows down to his bones, without even turning around, the cadence of the voice and the pressure of their fingers. 

Alex. 

His hair’s longer and his face is clean and Tommy’s breath catches in his throat.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I said this would be two parts, but things got away from me thanks to [Em](http://fullstopmgnt.tumblr.com) and [Hannah](http://harrybasquiat.tumblr.com). All mistakes are mine, please heed the warnings in the tags, and thank you thank you thank you for the kind words about part one.

Tommy’s frozen. Alex doesn’t seem bothered by the improbability of any of this, just slides himself onto the empty barstool next to Tommy and props his elbows up on the bar like it’s where he belongs. 

“It’s funny, innit?” 

Tommy’s ears are buzzing. Alex is talking, almost definitely to him, but it all feels surreal. Even more surreal than the rest of his life, if he’s honest.

“What?” 

The word sounds foreign to his own ears, and Tommy doesn’t think he even meant to say anything at all, but Alex is looking at him, hair clean and falling into his eyes, the ones that Tommy sees in his dreams and his nightmares, lips curling up in an answering smile.

“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world,” Alex drawls, nodding at the barman when he slides a glass of whiskey in front of Alex.

This has to be some kind of dream, Tommy thinks. None of it makes any sense. He can’t feel his legs, so he shifts on his stool. It doesn’t help.

“‘M not drinking gin,” he says, and he doesn’t sound like himself. Not that Tommy can really recall what he sounds like anymore, but none of this feels like his life. 

Alex rolls his eyes, picks up the glass, and downs half of it in one swallow. Tommy’s eyes catch on the bob of his Adam’s apple. 

“It’s a quote, mate. Casablanca? Y’know, the movie?”

He licks his lips and Tommy knows he needs to stop staring, knows he needs to get up and run and never come back to this pub again, to cross it off his list, but he can’t look away from the flicker of Alex’s tongue and the shine of his bottom lip. 

“Dunno what you’re on about, sorry,” Tommy says belatedly.

The numbness has spread to his fingers now, and he grips his glass tighter, like that’ll bring the feeling back. His skin feels too hot when he tosses back the rest of the whiskey, and the glass slips a little when he’s putting it back down and knocks against the bar top. 

“It’s a movie,” Alex says slowly. “Gotta get you out more, yeah? Live a little?”

Live a little, Tommy thinks, live a little, like things went on after everything that happened. They didn’t, though. Not for Tommy at least. They stopped and he’s stuck. Apparently Alex isn’t. He just kept going, slipped back into his old life. At least that’s the way it seems, sitting here with Alex vibrant and alive beside him.

“How’d you even recognize me?” 

Tommy doesn’t mean to say it, but he can’t quite fathom this reality, where Alex ended up in Brighton, too, and that he’s sitting next to Tommy going on about movies and gin when Tommy can’t feel his limbs and the last time he saw Alex, he’d kissed him, sunk his teeth into Alex’s lower lip until they were both gasping with it. 

Alex finishes off his whiskey and signals for another. The pub’s still buzzing around them, but everything’s a blur but Alex, the hollow of his cheeks and his dark hair and the way his eyes are brighter than Tommy can remember. 

He doesn’t expect Alex to lean in, shoulder pressing heavy against Tommy’s, smelling faintly of washing powder and salt, but he does.

“Recognize the back of your head anywhere,” he says lowly, his breath hot against Tommy’s ear, and it’s filthy, sets Tommy’s nerves on edge instantly. 

Unbidden memories flood Tommy’s mind, the ones he tries to push down even harder than the bombs, the ones where he’s face down in the dark, red-faced and breathless, Alex’s front pressed all along his back and Alex’s prick heavy inside him.

Tommy’s face is deep red, he can feel it, the flush curling its way down his neck, and Alex lingers for a second, laughs softly in Tommy’s ear before pulling back just as their second round arrives. 

“You didn’t think I’d forget you, did you? ‘S a funny coincidence that we both ended up here, I suppose.”

“Sure,” Tommy says, his voice strangled.

Alex smiles at him broadly, like he hadn’t just unearthed all of Tommy’s memories of the things they did--the things Tommy let Alex do, and pushes the glass closer to him.

“C’mon, drink up. Celebrate old mates running into each other again.”

Alex claps him on the shoulder, hard enough that Tommy jerks away instinctively. He wishes the floor would just swallow him up, but it doesn’t, and alcohol is the next best thing, so he downs his drink in one go and tries to focus on the way it burns going down instead of how fast his heart’s beating in his chest. 

“So,” Alex starts, eyes roving over Tommy’s face intently enough that it makes Tommy feel naked and caught out, like Alex can see that Tommy still wants things from him, even if Tommy doesn’t want to admit it to himself. 

“So,” Tommy echoes, because Alex doesn’t seem pressed to finish his sentence, and the silence stretches out between them until Tommy thinks it might snap with tension.

It must be the right move, because Alex huffs out a laugh and edges himself and his barstool a little closer to Tommy, close enough that he can feel the heat radiating off of him, and close enough that people might start to wonder, even in the dim light of the pub. 

“What’ve you been doing with yourself?”

It’s so easy and innocuous, the way Alex says it. Like there’s a life that boys like them fit into. And maybe for Alex, there is, but Tommy’s unmoored on his best day. 

He just shrugs in response, because he doesn’t know how to tell Alex that his head might be a bit fucked up. 

“Working at a chip shop,” Tommy says, staring down into his empty glass. 

Alex must signal for another one, because one second Tommy’s getting lost in the words scratched into the wood, and the next, there’s a glass of clear liquid sliding into his line of vision.

“Tryin’ t’get me drunk? On gin?”

The words slip out before Tommy can stop them. The alcohol he’s already consumed is loosening his tongue and the feeling’s coming back to his limbs in pins and needles. 

“Nah,” Alex laughs. “Don’t need to get you drunk, do I? Never did before, anyway.”

And there it is, laid bare in Alex’s raspy voice. There’s no desperation in it. Not like Tommy remembers, when they were wet and cold and scared. It’s just low and confident, his eyes hooded when he looks at Tommy, like he's remembering hovering above Tommy and pressing him down, hands firm and gentle at his throat, Tommy’s eyes rolling back in his head his hips squirming.

 _Fucking shameless_ , Tommy thinks, ears burning red. 

“Hey,” Alex says, leaning over to speak softly in his ear again. “You’re all right. Take a breath before you fall flat on your back in the middle of all these people.”

It shouldn’t fucking help, but it does. When Alex squeezes his bicep and digs his fingernails in, it’s like Tommy’s a puppet and all of his strings have just been cut. He can feel the energy start to bleed out of his limbs, and he grabs for the gin Alex got him and takes a shaky sip.

“What’ve you been doing? Why’re you here?” 

Tommy winces at how harsh his voice sounds, but Alex lets it roll off, just leans his elbows on the bar top again and shakes out his hair.

“Missed the sea, I guess. Weird, innit? Thought I’d never want to come back, but.” Alex shrugs and picks at his fingernails. Tommy watches him pull at the thin skin around them until a pinprick of blood appears.

“Got a job developing film a street over from here, and it’s all right. Different, you know?”

Alex turns to face him like he actually expects Tommy to answer. He looks so—not like who he was when Tommy knew him. On a rational level, the tiny piece of Tommy’s brain that still has some hold on reality knows that this makes sense. It’s been a few years, and god knows what happened to Alex after Tommy lost track of him. Dunkirk wasn’t even close to the end, just a strange lull, seemingly devoid of air. Some kind of awful nightmare that stretched out longer than Tommy thought was possible.

“You like it?”

Tommy turns slightly in Alex’s direction, and it feels like giving in, because Alex leans into it. Not in any way that’s noticeable to anyone else, Tommy thinks, but he feels it. Like Alex is settling into something he’s used to, like some piece has fallen into place. He looks softer. There’s less smirk and bravado in the lines of his face. Tommy likes it, he realizes with a sick twist of his gut. 

“It’s like. Catching up on what I missed, a bit.” Alex shakes his head and looks down at his lap, like he’s just admitted something he thinks he shouldn’t have.

It makes sense, in a roundabout kind of way, Tommy supposes. It seems overwhelming, if he’s honest with himself. It’s easier to curl inward. There’s enough in his head that he can’t seem to sort through without anything else. His mum used to sigh when he came in on the weekends, mud splattered and scraped knees. She’d look at the ceiling and tell him--or herself, maybe--that the days are long and the years are short. Everything feels long to Tommy, though. The days, hours, minutes. They stretch out in front of him and taunt his slow limbs and racing heart.

“How’s working in a chippy for you? Do you not get free food? You’re still stick,” Alex says, nudging into Tommy’s space until their arms are pressed together.

“Even chips get old after a while,” Tommy says. _I’m only hungry every third day_ , he thinks, because what good would sharing that do. 

“Mmm,” Alex hums. “I’ll have to try em and see for myself, yeah?”

He stretches luxuriously, pulling up and away from Tommy, and Tommy can hear his back crack even over the low din of pub noise. He flags down the bartender and pays up before Tommy can protest. 

“Ready?” Alex asks, like all of this is a foregone conclusion, like of course they’re leaving together. Tommy feels like he’s ages behind everything, brain slogging to catch up. He’s still stuck on Alex ending up next to him.

Tommy’s limbs start to move before he gives them permission. He follows Alex out, maintaining a safe distance and staring at the floor to avoid catching anyone’s eye. 

It’s strange, Alex letting him take the lead, striding beside him in the direction of Tommy’s flat. Usually he’d be on the beach alone at this point, wriggling his numb toes inside his boots. Hoping that the sea’ll swallow him up in his sleep, because he’s not brave enough to let go when he’s awake. 

-

His stomach starts caving in on itself when they reach the chippy and his flat. It’s dark enough that some of the shabbiness is hidden, even if Tommy doesn’t know why he cares about that. He doesn’t pause long enough for Alex to take a good look, just digs his key out of his pocket and unlocks the door, ignores the way his hand shakes and how his tongue feels like a weight in his mouth. 

“Bet you get tired of the smell,” Alex says with a laugh, his footsteps loud in the stairway. 

Tommy’s glad Alex is behind him. He just shrugs in response, even though he can feel the weight of Alex’s stare on the back of his neck.

His flat looks smaller with Alex in it. It’s the first time Tommy’s ever had another person in it, he realizes. It’s small even when Tommy’s alone, just a bed and a dresser and a window that sticks and makes the room stifling when August rolls around. It’s chilly tonight, though. Tommy blames the goosebumps crawling up his skin on that, wishes the alcohol were still warming him up from the inside.

“‘S nice,” Alex says, making his way around the small perimeter. 

It’s not nice, Tommy knows. It’s plain and serviceable and none of it matters to him. 

“Thanks,” he says, because the silence is pressing down on him uncomfortably, and his mum’s voice is ringing through his head, going on about manners. Even if Alex--Alex never gave a fuck about manners, when Tommy knew him before. And Alex has seen Tommy stretched out and begging for him, so he’s not sure what good manners’ll do at this point. His voice sounds deafening in the quiet, and he wishes he could take it back. 

Alex doesn’t say anything else, just stands in front of the window for a long minute, blocking the dim light of the moon. Tommy’s frozen, doesn’t know if he should go for the light or leave it. Doesn’t know what Alex’s game is here, and it’s putting him on edge, pins and needles stabbing his feet and fingertips. 

“Can almost see it from here,” Alex says, turning to face him. 

Tommy can barely make out his features in the dark, Alex’s eyes and mouth just smudges. He blinks hard, like that’ll bring things into focus that’ve been blurry for longer than he can remember. 

“See what?” he croaks, digging his fingernails into his palm.

It stings when he breaks the skin, and Alex strides forward until there’s almost no space between them. Solid and physical and radiating warmth and undeniably real. 

Tommy feels the blood start to seep under his fingernails, then Alex reaches out and tugs his fingers gently, pulls them away from his palm and wraps them up in his hand.

 _Stop_ , Tommy wants to say, _stop_ , because he can feel the blood slippery on their skin, but Alex just steps in closer so they’re toe to toe and grips Tommy’s hip with his other hand.

“The ocean,” Alex says belatedly, a centimeter from Tommy’s lips, like he’s holding his ground, waiting for Tommy to run.

Tommy’s always running, but never from Alex. Never from Alex, even if every cell in his body is screaming for him to go. 

It’s embarrassingly gentle, like Alex is still waiting for him to bolt, to rip himself away from the soft press of Alex’s lips and push him out. Down the stairs and away from the smell of chip grease and back out of Tommy’s tiny life. 

All of Tommy’s nerve endings are lit up. All he can focus on are the parts of his body that Alex is touching.

His lips. Soft, then harder, slanting across Tommy’s, encouraging him to open up and let Alex in.

Hands. One still at his hip, digging in tightly enough that there’ll be a bruise there tomorrow morning. Something Tommy can hold on to when Alex disappears again. One at his neck, thumb dragging back and forth in the hollow of his throat, ghosting pressure that’s too much and not enough all at once. 

Alex is stepping on one of Tommy’s feet. He notes it absently as Alex kisses his way down his neck, replacing his thumb with his lips at the base of Tommy’s throat, and his pulse stutters. He wonders if Alex can feel it. If Alex realizes that he’s still painfully easy for it. 

“Missed this, did you,” Alex says against his skin, his lips hot and spit slick, and Tommy groans, can’t help himself. He grips Alex’s shoulders, but doesn’t let himself pull Alex closer. That would be too much. A step further than he can let himself go, even after all the ways in which he’s revealed that he still wants Alex. 

“Yeah,” Alex whispers, but it still sounds harsh and loud in the quiet. “Thought so,” he finishes right before he bites down on Tommy’s lower lip, hard enough that Tommy worries he’s going to draw blood even as he keens into it. He tells himself that he’s not going to lead. He’ll take what Alex gives him, even if it leaves him on the edge, cold and bruised with the lines of Alex’s fingers. 

He pushes Tommy back gently, so slowly that Tommy doesn’t realize they’ve moved until the backs of his knees hit the edge of the mattress. It’s familiar and strange, the way the weight of Alex’s body suffocates him. It’s softer than he remembers, but the whoosh of air leaving his lungs makes his dick twitch with the memory of Alex hovering above him in the dark, hands tight as his neck, squeezing, leaving marks that Tommy pressed fingers against for days after, reveling in the ache.

Alex is hard against him, Tommy can feel it, even through the fabric of both of their trousers, and he sags with relief against the mattress. He’s not alone in this. Not totally, at least, judging by the way Alex nudges his hips against Tommy’s and sighs roughly into his mouth, lips slick and relentless. 

It’s different from last night. Last night, that never should’ve happened, Tommy thinks, hips twitching up against Alex’s, enough to make him stutter into Tommy’s mouth. Alex is all consuming, and Tommy didn’t even think to get her name. He doesn’t want to think about the why, why this feels so different, why it feels like he’s alive for the first time in ages, even as Alex pushes him down, circles his hands around Tommy’s neck, and makes it harder for him to inhale.

Alex tightens his hands experimentally, just long enough that Tommy’s lungs start to burn, and hard enough that Tommy pushes up against Alex, prick hard and pressing against Alex’s arse, and blinks up at his awful face, the one that Tommy sees in every dream and every nightmare. 

“Fuck,” Alex mutters, and he lets go of his hold on Tommy’s neck, just strokes his thumb down the bump of Tommy’s Adam’s apple. 

Tommy swallows hard and stares at the obvious line of Alex’s dick in his trousers, and the way Alex’s hand is pressed against it, squeezing, just like he’d squeezed Tommy’s throat a minute ago. 

“Yeah,” Tommy says, voice strangled, and he hates himself the second the words leave his lips. He can feel the blush, like he always can, but there’s nowhere to go, not with Alex perched on top of his hips, knees on either side of him holding Tommy in place, the heavy weight of him inescapable. 

Alex laughs and drags his hand away from Tommy’s throat, lips painfully red and shiny in the dark, a physical reminder that Alex wants this, too. I did that, Tommy thinks, and the rush of arousal is heady and he wants to feel this way forever, wants to catalogue every inch of Alex’s skin and the way he smells and how he feels, pressed up against Tommy. 

“Don’t have anything, unless you do,” he says regretfully, eyes deep and dark, and Tommy flushes again, and his toes curl with want and disappointment, because he doesn’t either. He thinks about last night, curses himself for not nicking a spare rubber from the girl’s nightstand. 

He shakes his head and blinks hard. His eyes are stinging, like he’s fucking tearing up at the thought of not having Tommy on him, in him, pressing deep enough that Tommy’ll feel him for the rest of the week. _Fuck_. Fuck, he’s fucked. He blinks harder, pulls his hands from Alex’s thighs and tangles his fingers nervously in his own hair, scraping it across his forehead in the hopes that he can hide it from Alex. 

“Hey,” Alex says, voice raspy. “Doesn’t mean we can’t take care of this,” he finishes, laying back out over Tommy, legs tight on either side of him, _hotheavyrelentless_ , his hands back at Tommy’s throat and lips brushing over his.

“I remember,” he says lowly, and he tightens his hands and kisses Tommy, makes him gasp until there isn’t any air left in his lungs and he has to squeeze his eyes shut against the tiny black dots that start to take over his vision. 

Alex loosens his hold for a second, pulls back just enough that Tommy can feel cold air against his skin again, and he hates it, groans for Alex to come back.

“Yeah, Alex says, and he grinds down against Tommy’s prick and tightens his hands around his neck and Tommy comes in his trousers with a choked off sob, the shock of it jerking through his whole body, against the solid weight of Alex, and it’s so much, even fully clothed. It’s every nerve in Tommy’s body, and his eyes are wet when Alex stops moving on top of him, hips still even though Tommy can feel him, hard and bleeding through the fabric between them. 

Tommy can smell his washing powder. It’s strange, the way he’s never noticed it before, but it’s surrounding them, strange and comforting, Alex still on top of him, pinning him down, hands flat against the mattress on either side of his head. He can see every pore this close, how Alex’s skin is a little spotty at the temples, the way he’s still slightly out of breath, nostrils flaring sharply, lips still swollen and red. 

“Haven’t changed too much, have you?” 

There’s no malice in Alex’s voice. Tommy looks for it at least, but he can’t find it. He just sounds faintly fond and satisfied, like he’s found all of Tommy’s buttons and pressed them in the right order. 

“Fuck,” he says feelingly after a minute, his hips starting to move against Tommy’s again. 

Tommy winces, still sensitive, the drag of his wet pants getting increasingly uncomfortable.

“I’ll suck you off,” Tommy says against Alex’s mouth, eyes shut tightly, like that’ll block out the words coming out of his own mouth. Alex does his head in. Still. Tommy knows that, but he still hates the way he asks for things that should never leave the deep recesses of his brain. 

“Yeah,” Alex pants against his mouth, hips twitching, “Yeah, yeah, all right.”

He pulls back, their lips making a quiet smack when they part, and sighs as he unbuttons his trousers and pulls down his zip. He groans when he wraps his hand around his prick, and Tommy wants, even though he’s just come and can still feel the quiet aftershocks ricocheting through his body. 

He remembers the first time they did this. How it was the first time Tommy’d ever done anything, with anyone, and it ended up being Alex. How horribly sweaty his hands were, the way he gagged and choked and drooled all over Alex’s dick when Alex pushed too hard.

Mostly, he remembers how much he’d liked it. The terrifying, visceral feeling of not being able to breath, Alex’s cock too far down his throat. The sick fear of getting caught on his knees in front of another bloke. How he’d jerked off thinking about it later, holding his breath and hating himself even as he came shaking into his own hand. 

“C’mon,” he says when Alex doesn’t move. 

Alex looks at him long enough that Tommy starts to doubt it, feels the nervous sweat beading up on his forehead and wonders if he’s strong enough to buck Alex off. Not that there’s anywhere for him to go, even if he can run from this. 

“Missed you,” Alex breathes, the silence snapping with it, and he shuffles up Tommy’s chest, dick deep red and hard, shiny at the tip, and hot when Alex starts to slide it against Tommy’s lips. 

He inhales sharply through his nose and opens his mouth, lets Alex slide inside until it’s a hair too much, then he moans, remembers how much Alex liked it when he did that before. Before. So long ago that it feels like ancient history, even if it’s only been a handful of years. 

Alex starts to thrust, slowly, like he’s not sure how much Tommy can take. Whatever you want to give me, Tommy thinks, eyes starting to tear up as Alex nudges the back of his throat. It’s heady, Alex surrounding him, filling him up, even if it’s not the way he wanted. Filling him up and pushing him down and making it impossible to focus on anything but _AlexAlexAlex_.

He grips Alex’s hips, brushes his thumbs against the peek of bare skin there, where his trousers are spread. He drops his jaw and tries to swallow around Alex, but it’s too much, he’s too deep, and Tommy gags, spit dribbling out of the corner of his mouth, and Alex groans above him and pulls back a centimeter, grips Tommy’s headboard like a lifeline. 

The fabric of Alex’s trousers is rough around Tommy’s neck, brushing against the tender spots left by Alex’s fingers, and it’s too good, too much, so he digs his fingers into Alex’s hips and pulls him in, deep, deep, deep, until there isn’t any further to go, groans around the hot, bitter skin of Alex, and chokes again as Alex’s hips speed up and then stutter as he comes down Tommy’s throat, making him gag, the black spots crowding Tommy’s vision again until Alex pulls back, draws out of Tommy’s mouth and wipes the mess of spit and come from his chin. 

“You’re a right mess,” Alex says, smirking as he swings his legs over Tommy so he can shimmy out of his trousers. 

Tommy can’t make himself move. He can still feel Alex’s phantom weight above him, like he’s still pinned to the mattress. He can feel his toes, he realizes, and he still has his boots on. He lets himself close his eyes for a second, just take stock of everything. It’s over, already. He didn’t hold on tight enough, and now it’s getting further into the past with every second. 

His jaw is aching and his throat feels raw, and Tommy prays that Alex gripped his neck tightly enough that there’ll be bruises there for days, dark and unmistakeable, a painful reminder that Tommy got to have this again. 

He can feel the mattress sink under Alex’s weight. He shuts his eyes tighter, bracing himself for the impact of opening them to an empty room. His tiny, compact life, in this suffocating room, with just him. No one else.

Everything’s dark and blurry when he opens his eyes a second later, and then Alex’s face is bobbing into his field of vision, hair going haywire and eyes droopy and tired. 

“What’re you doing,” Tommy asks, and his voice sounds alien to his own ears, deep and raspy, enough that anyone would be able to tell what he’s been doing. 

Alex flops down next to him, Tommy’s mattress squeaking obnoxiously, and presses himself all along Tommy’s side, showing more naked skin than Tommy wants to let himself think about. He feels awkward, laying there fully clothed, pants drying sticky against his skin, while Alex is stretched out naked next to him, but he can’t make himself move. Like getting up, rolling off the bed to struggle out of his clothes would break something. Make Alex come to his senses and leave, and Tommy’ll feel even crazier than he did before, like he made it all up in his head. 

That seems more plausible than all of this: naked Alex, breathing softly against Tommy’s neck, his bare chest pressed against Tommy’s bicep. He feels heavy and real, but Tommy can’t let himself relax. He stares up at the ceiling and tries to lose himself in the water stains there. Those are real, he knows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm [here](http://polaroidgirlfriend.tumblr.com) on tumblr.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof, it's been a long time, and I'm sorry. But it's finally done! I hope it's not disappointing! Thanks to everyone who listened to me whine about it (especially Em and [Hannah](http://harrybasquiat.tumblr.com/) and to everyone who read and left the loveliest comments. Please heed the warnings in the tags, all mistakes are mine, and again, thank you everyone who's been so kind about this.

He must fall asleep at some point, because it’s light in his tiny room and he doesn’t remember how it got that way. He’s sweating and it takes him a second to figure out why. He tenses when he realizes that Alex is still next to him, stretched out and naked and taking up too much space in Tommy’s bed. 

It comes back to him in pieces. Running into Alex at the pub and leading him home. His eyes pricking with tears at the thought of not getting Alex inside of him. The way he gagged for it and how sore his jaw is. Tommy grinds his teeth against the pain and tries not to think about how uncomfortable his pants are or the relief that’s flooding his bones at the fact that Alex stayed.

Alex is wheezing in his sleep. Tommy assumes he’s sleeping, anyway. He can’t bring himself to move enough to look over at him, too afraid to move lest he wake Alex and shatter the quiet illusion that this is something Tommy gets to have. His throat scratchy and used and Alex in his bed, smelling like salt and cigarettes. He’ll be late for work if he doesn’t get up soon judging by the light in the room. Still, he stays like he’s glued to the mattress even though he’s in desperate need of a wash.

“You awake?”

Alex’s voice is rough with sleep and the sound of it knocks the wind out of Tommy. He lets himself turn to look at him, Alex’s hair curling against the gray tinge of Tommy’s pillow. He’s on his stomach, his face mashed into Tommy’s pillow and his back is pale and unmarked and all Tommy wants to do is press himself against it.

He gets up instead, his joints protesting when he swings his legs over the side of the bed.

“Have work soon,” he says, wincing at how flat his voice sounds, like he’s somehow given himself away already. 

He doesn’t let himself look back at Alex, just keeps moving, his ankles popping and his pants rough and clammy against his skin as he walks into the bathroom. 

He doesn’t let himself look in the mirror, either. He doesn’t want to see if his face is different or the same and he’s not sure which he’s more afraid of. He runs the bath instead of looking at himself. Makes the water as cold as he can stand and brushes his teeth with his eyes shut, hard enough that his gums start to sting. 

The water’s cold enough that Tommy feels like his whole body’s shriveling up. He stares at his toes, winter pale and distorted under the water. He imagines that his knees are still red and bruised like they after the first three times he’d sucked Alex off. He scrubs his body until it’s pink and he can’t feel the cold anymore.

“D’you mind?” 

Alex is at the door and Tommy’s standing naked in the tub. He wants to cover himself but his limbs are too cold to move quickly and he ends up stumbling when he tries to get out.

“Careful,” Alex says quietly, his hand gripping Tommy’s upper arm. He can circle his fingers almost all the way around. 

“Sorry, just. Towel’s behind you.”

Alex just looks at him for a second, his fingers still digging into Tommy’s arm and his eyes trained on his face. Tommy’s grateful that he’s not looking down.

Alex blinks, tightens his fingers, then lets go. Tommy watches the muscles move under his skin as he turns to grab Tommy’s towel where it’s hanging on the door. 

“Cold?”

He’s smirking and Tommy can feel himself blush as he snatches the towel out of Alex’s hands. The smirk blossoms into a grin and Tommy can’t stop staring at his dimple. He can’t remember ever seeing it before and it makes him wonder if he’s really never seen Alex smiling. 

“Yes,” he bites, belatedly, wrapping the towel tightly around his waist and skirting past Alex to the relative safety of his bedroom. 

His bed is made up, sheet and blanket pulled taut and pillow perfect and flat. Tommy hadn’t pegged Alex as a neat one, but he doesn’t let himself linger on it. 

He’s tucking in his shirt when Alex emerges from the bathroom, still naked and his face thick with sleep. He leans against the doorframe and Tommy scrubs his hand through his hair and bites at his bottom lip. He doesn’t know what comes next. 

“So,” Alex drawls, “you all right if I stay for the day? Promise I won’t rob you blind.”

He winks and Tommy blushes again. He shoves his hands in his pockets to stop himself from biting his nails down to the quick. 

“Don’t have much for you to rob me of,” Tommy says, and Alex’s grin just widens when Tommy curses under his breath, his ears burning not.

“Don’t you?”

Tommy feels more naked now than he did when he was actually naked. 

“It’s fine,” he hears himself saying, “I’ll be done this afternoon.”

Alex is still standing in the doorway, taking up space like its his right, and Tommy can’t make himself move.

“Okay,” Alex says after a second, his grin shrinking until his dimple’s just a faint shadow.

Tommy doesn’t let himself look at Alex’s body even though he wants to. He tries to focus on the way his boots are still damp instead of Alex’s skin.

“Aren’t you going to be late?”

Tommy blinks.

“Yeah,” he says, “yeah, I have to go.”

Alex must take pity on him because he steps into Tommy’s room, filling it up but clearing the doorway and leaving an escape route. 

“Thanks,” Tommy says on instinct, even though Alex is probably the one who should be thanking him. 

Alex smells like Tommy’s toothpaste and memories that Tommy tries to bury every day when he walks by, and when he trips down the stairs, he blames it on that, black dots dancing at the edges of his vision. 

-

Work is blessedly busy. Tommy sweats and burns himself and his feet ache and he chooses to focus on those things and not the hope and dread that Alex is still upstairs. A drop of hot oil hits his chin and Tommy can practically feel it blistering. He jerks back and bites his lip, swearing under his breath. 

He can still feel it when he wipes down his space at the end of the day, hot and stinging but not enough to stop his stomach from dropping when he thinks about going back upstairs and finding Alex still there. In his flat, in his bed, like he belongs there. In the tiny world Tommy’s constructed for himself that bares no resemblance to who he was before. 

It’s not that he makes the choice to walk to the beach and into the surf instead of going back upstairs to his flat, too small for him now that Alex is in it. But every cell in his body screams at him to turn back and Tommy only makes it halfway up the stairs to his door before he turns around, heart beating out of his chest, and goes. 

All he can smell is grease and all he can think about how it must be coating every inch of his skin at this point. The wind is cold against his cheeks but it feels good against the burn on his chin. Tommy tilts his face up, inhales, and holds in the breath until his lungs are burning. 

He walks into the surf before he fully realizes it, the cold water seeping through the soles of his shoes. He curls his toes against it and blinks out at the horizon, how the slate gray of the water is only a few shades darker than the sky, overcast and looming and Tommy wishes, not for the first time, that it would swallow him up. 

Alex probably won’t start to wonder where he is for hours. Tommy’s not sure how long he’s been at the beach, but he didn’t tell Alex when to expect him back. He wonders how long he’d have to wait before Alex cleared out. A few hours? Days? A week? 

There’s a funny kind of irony to it, the bit where Tommy wishes the waves would just pull him in and roll him out to sea. He remembers feeling desperate for every second he got during the war, not letting himself fall asleep at night because he might never wake up again, but now all he wants is blissful blankness.

He sits down, his knees cracking as he goes, and lets the water soak through his clothes. He can’t stop staring at the way it curls around his limbs like it’s going to take him with it and then retreats at the last second, gluing the fabric of his trousers to his skin and weighing him down. Holding him in place. 

If Tommy closes his eyes, he can picture all the men he watched walk into the ocean. He used to tell himself they swam home. Now he realizes what they were doing and wishes he’d done the same when he had the chance, because now he’s too heavy to let himself go.

-

The sky is the same color as the ocean when Tommy wakes up. His legs are numb with cold and he swallows down the panic crawling up his throat. He’s still here. Still here like every other time he’s done this, because being passive isn’t a death sentence anymore. 

The tide’s coming in and Tommy can feel the waves licking at his neck and he screws his eyes shut, focuses on the crash of the water so intently that he doesn’t hear someone coming up to stand beside him, level with his head in the surf.

His body’s too tired and waterlogged to react properly, but cold fear still races through Tommy’s veins and sets his heart pounding.

“Dunno why, but I thought I might find you here.”

Alex’s voice is soft. Quiet in comparison to the ocean creeping in and Tommy could live another thirty years and he’d still recognize it anywhere. 

“C’mon, up. Going to catch a cold this way.”

Alex crouches down next to him and Tommy wants to tell him to go but his tongue feels too big for his mouth and his body’s traitorous and gives in easily when Alex tugs him up by the arm. 

“C’mon,” Alex says again, his breath hot against Tommy’s ear and his arm slipping around his waist to hold him up, “I made beans on toast and I’ll run you a bath. Know you took one this morning but you’re covered in sand, mate.”

Tommy feels like he’s floating above his body, watching himself get dragged home, his hair dark and stringy with salt water and sand and Alex dwarfing him, strong and warm and dry and normal, like Tommy was once. 

He forces himself to pull away from Alex’s body when the reach the stairs. 

“Go ahead,” he croaks, gestures for Alex to go, “‘s too narrow for both of us.”

Alex is shaking his head before Tommy even gets all the words out.

“Don’t want you falling back down the stairs, c’mon, go up, I’m following.”

Tommy blinks at him. His eyes are stinging from the salt water dripping from his hair and Alex is blurry and looks so much like a memory that Tommy feels like he’ll be gone if he just blinks hard enough.

He’s embarrassingly winded by the time he gets to the top of the stairs, and he heads straight for his bedroom when they get in, not caring that he’s making a mess all over the floor, his shoes still heavy with water and sand. 

“What were you doing?”

Alex’s voice is quiet and he sounds like he probably already knows the answer, Tommy thinks, trying to pay attention to what’s in front of him and not the way his head is still filled with the roar of the ocean. 

He shakes his head and Alex takes a step forward. Puts his hands on Tommy’s waist like he’s trying to steady him. He drags his thumbs in tiny circles and the heat from his body starts to bleed through Tommy’s wet clothes. 

“Hey,” Alex says, edging in close enough that his breath hits Tommy’s face, “you’re all right.”

He smells like coffee and something sweet and Tommy wants to lean into it because he’s tired of the smell of the ocean and chip grease. He says it like Tommy’s actually all right, like he hasn’t waded into the ocean every night for the past year with no intention of wading back out. Like he doesn’t hope that the tide comes in and sweeps him away every time he falls asleep on the shore. Like coming to Brighton wasn’t strategic.

Alex blinks at him slowly. Like they’re both underwater and everything’s a few seconds, a few millimeters off. 

“Breathe,” he says, and Tommy hadn’t realized he’d stopped. 

He exhales in a rush, sucking a breath back in and breaking up the noise in his head. 

“Sorry,” he chokes out, and Alex is shaking his head before he can even finish the word. 

He brings a hand up to Tommy’s face and hooks his index finger under Tommy’s chin and tilts it up.

The burn, Tommy remembers, wincing when Alex brushes his thumb against it.

“Work?”

Tommy swallows and tries to blink yes in morse code. 

“Yeah,” he says after a second, feeling Alex’s knuckles against his Adam’s apple, his hand still under Tommy’s chin.

“Didn’t realize working at a chip shop was such a dangerous job.”

He’s smirking but Tommy doesn’t think Alex is making fun of him. He’s too close for Tommy to relax, so close that the cold drag of his clothes against his skin isn’t at the forefront of his mind anymore, so close that he can hear Alex’s breathing. 

“Anything can be dangerous,” he says, and then Alex is leaning in, his hand dropping to Tommy’s shoulder and his lips pressing against Tommy’s, lips still parted.

Tommy sucks in a breath. Draws it right out of Alex’s mouth and Alex’s lips curl up into a smile against his, his fingers digging into Tommy’s shoulder. Tommy wants to lean into the bite of his fingernails but he can’t figure out how, or his body’s still numb from the ocean. 

Alex kisses him slowly. Lightly, his tongue a flicker against Tommy’s, and it’s not enough. It’s intangible and if Tommy exhales too hard it’s all going to be gone, the warmth of Alex’s body and the way he’s filling up Tommy’s flat and Tommy isn’t even sure if he wants him there or not but he doesn’t want to find out what he’ll feel like when Alex is gone. 

He loses time and slips into the rhythm of Alex’s mouth, of his lips and the way his hand has made its way back to Tommy’s neck, thumb pressing too gently into the dip between Tommy’s collarbones. 

Tommy doesn’t remember it like this. Doesn’t remember anything tentative or slow, Alex sucking at his bottom lip like he’s trying to draw Tommy in instead of biting it like he was trying to crawl into Tommy, leaving it stinging long after he crawled away. 

He’s cold when Alex pulls back, his lips detaching from Tommy’s with a soft sound and his face sharpening into focus again. 

“Your lips are blue,” Alex whispers, bringing his thumb up and tracing them. 

Tommy wants to grab his hand so Alex can’t pull away but his limbs still feel heavy and frozen. Eventually Alex lets his hand drop to Tommy’s waist again and curls his fingers into the damp fabric, points of not enough pressure against Tommy’s body. In some other life he asks Alex to warm him up and smirks at him and doesn’t look away when Alex smirks back. 

In this life, though, he just lets himself sway forward into the warmth of Alex’s body and somehow manages to catch Alex’s lips with his own. It’s the best I can do, he thinks desperately, wishing Alex could read his mind.

The odds that Alex can actually read his mind are fairly small, but he does what Tommy wants regardless. He rucks up Tommy’s shirt and palms his hips and it makes Tommy realize how cold he is.

“More,” he breathes, begs, against Alex’s mouth and Alex complies.

He digs his fingernails into Tommy’s hips and bites his bottom lip and Tommy can feel the hard line of his cock, impossibly hot through the cold fabric. The sting of Alex’s teeth makes his cock jerk and he feels Alex smirk against his mouth, the feeling foreign but something Tommy wants to chase. 

Tommy waits for Alex to pick up speed. To shove Tommy against the wall of his bedroom and suck him off messily, hand wrapped around his own cock at the same time. But it doesn’t happen. Alex kisses him like he’s trying to crawl inside him, calculated and deliberate, walking him slowly back toward the bed like he’s intent on drawing this out. 

“Lay back for me,” he mumbles against Tommy’s mouth, and Tommy lets himself fall. His stomach lurches with a split second of vertigo before he hits the mattress, bed still perfectly made up. 

Alex settles himself on Tommy’s thighs. His lips look bruised in the low light of Tommy’s bedroom and he keeps licking them like he’s trying to take in every trace of Tommy he can. He stares down at him long enough that Tommy feels his cheeks start to burn, his cock obviously hard and Alex just staring at him, his eyes flitting up and down Tommy’s body before they focus in on his mouth. 

It’s more urgent now. Or maybe it’s just that Tommy’s in bed, that they’re in bed together. In Tommy’s flat, where they can make noise if they want to, where there’s not someone else sleeping centimeters away. 

He arches up into the weight of Alex’s body and twitches his hips against Alex’s, feeling hot all over when Alex groans into his mouth, his thumb dragging over the jut of Tommy’s Adam’s apple. Tommy swallows up into the pressure of Alex’s thumb and tries not to whine at how not enough it is. 

“Still like that,” Alex says, lips barely touching his.

He’s too close for Tommy to make out clearly but he’d bet his entire life that Alex is smirking even though his cheeks are flushed.

Tommy doesn’t say anything. He lets Alex go. Lays there while Alex peels his shirt up and over his head and palms his cock. He listens to the wet thwap of Alex’s clothing hitting the floor and shuts his eyes when Alex rucks his shirt up his body, rearranges Tommy’s limbs so he can strip him of his clothes. 

It’s worse like this, or maybe it’s better, because Tommy feels like he might come if Alex just keeps looking at him, jerking himself off until the head of his cock is red and shiny and dripping on Tommy’s stomach and making Tommy’s legs go numb with the weight of him. 

“Could come all over you,” Alex is saying, and he’s swimming in and out of focus, “or,” he says, wrapping a sticky hand around Tommy’s cock, the shock of it making him groan, “I could fuck you.”

Tommy lets out an embarrassing whine, his cock jerking in Alex’s grip before Alex lets go again and leans down to kiss him, biting at his lips and digging his fingernails into Tommy’s arms. 

“D’you want that?”

Alex’s nose is brushing his and Tommy feels hot all over, his cock dragging against Alex’s stomach where he’s pressed on top of him.

“Please,” he says, and Alex scrambles off of him to dig through the pocket of his trousers. 

He props himself up on his elbows and kicks the blanket down to the foot of the bed and watches the long line of Alex’s back and the curve of his ass. His chest is flushed down to his cock when he turns around and Tommy swallows, wants Alex on him, in him, doesn’t want to lose him.

Alex has a condom in his hand and he looks like he wants to eat Tommy alive. He moves slowly, palming his cock as he goes, crawls back up Tommy’s body and kisses him again. He licks into Tommy’s mouth until Tommy’s gasping for air and arching up into Alex.

He pulls back eventually and settles on Tommy’s thighs. Tommy watches his chest rise and fall and inhales when Alex brings his index and middle finger to Tommy’s mouth, rests them on his lips for a second and then pushes them forward.

Alex tastes like salt. Like the ocean, and Tommy closes his lips around his fingers and shuts his eyes. 

He loses track of time. It’s easy to focus on the heaviness of Alex’s body and the salt of his skin.

He feels empty when Alex pulls his fingers out of his mouth but Alex leans forward and kisses him to fill the void and gently spreads Tommy’s legs before he pulls back again. 

“Ready?”

Tommy bites his lip and nods and Alex mirrors him. He puts one hand on Tommy’s knee and uses the other to open him up slowly. It hurts and it’s familiar and spit was never enough but Tommy leans into it. Centers himself on the slow burn and the curl of Alex’s fingers inside him, one, then two, brushing up against Tommy and making his whole body flicker.

“Please,” he says after what feels like ages, his thighs starting to ache with the stretch of his legs around Alex’s hips. 

Alex slips his fingers out and runs his thumb down Tommy’s throat before he kisses him, pressing down just enough to make Tommy short of breath and his cock twitch between them.

It’s too much when Alex slides in, and Tommy can’t swallow the noise that escapes him. He can’t breathe, keeps leaning up into the pressure of Alex’s hand at his throat and he thinks this might be as close as he’s ever come to dying, his body lit up from the inside and Alex heavy over him, pinning him in place with his hips and his cock and making his bed squeak and bang against the wall.

He can’t bring himself to care about the scrapes it’ll leave, can’t focus on anything but the hot drag of Alex inside him and how it feels like he’s going to melt right out of his skin, Alex’s hand holding him to the mattress by the throat. Tommy lets his whole body go limp. He lets Alex use him, lets Alex kiss him breathless again, his hand still at Tommy’s throat. 

Alex makes noise that Tommy doesn’t remember. High pitched and breathy in the back of his throat, tiny whines that slip past his lips and into Tommy’s mouth. 

He can feel it when Alex comes, only remembers how hard his own cock is when Alex’s twitches inside him, the press of his hips spreading Tommy’s legs to their limit. 

“C’mon,” Alex pants, wrapping his hand around Tommy’s cock and jerking him off as he slips out of him. Tommy groans at the pain and Alex brings his hand back to Tommy’s throat and presses down and Tommy’s whole body caves in. He comes, stripes his stomach and Alex’s hand and Alex doesn’t let him go until he’s shivering from overstimulation.

His skin feels like it’s on fire. 

Not in a bad way, necessarily, but Tommy feels like he’s going to levitate right out of it, like everything’s too hot and his body’s just going to give up the ghost at any second.

He can’t hear anything but his own heartbeat, deafening in his ears and loud enough that Tommy thinks there might be something wrong with him. 

He stares up at the water stains on his ceiling and pretends he’s alone. He tries to will Alex away even though he was begging for him ten minutes ago. He blushes at the memory because it’s not--he would never, normally. Would never try to drag someone into his microscopic life, especially not someone like Alex.

“Hey,” Alex says after a minute, and Tommy winces.

“You still breathing?”

Tommy exhales a breath and forces himself to turn and look at Alex.

“Yeah,” he says, the word scraping his throat.

Alex’s cheeks are flushed and his hair’s a mess, curling at the ends and getting right in his eyes.

“You have tattoos,” he starts, and has to dig his fingernails into his palm to stop himself from reaching out and touching. 

A dimple presses into Alex’s cheek and Tommy blushes. He turns his head back to stare at the ceiling again, because if he keeps looking at Alex he won’t be able to stop himself from touching.

“I do,” he says, right in Tommy’s ear, and he settles in there, presses his body along Tommy’s side like they’ve done it a hundred times before.

And they have in some ways. On trains home, squeezed into the same seat, falling all over each other in sleep. Alex curling into him on the beach, the ground frozen underneath them. But not like this. Not in Tommy’s small, dingy flat, not on a mattress. All Tommy can think about is the weight of it, the conscious choice of both of them that led to this conclusion. No happenstance here, he thinks, Alex’s breath hitting his neck. Every second that led them here was deliberate. Desperate but deliberate, Alex’s hands heavy with intention when they pressed to the base of his throat. 

“I like to get them when I travel,” he whispers, and brings his hand up to rest on Tommy’s chest, thumb brushing over his nipple, “as a memory.”

“Because the actual memory isn’t enough?”

He feels Alex shrug but can’t make himself look over at him. He’s too close, too hard for Tommy to look at because the more he looks at him the harder he’ll be to forget. 

“No,” Alex says softly, “not always. We remember things wrong sometimes, I think. You know?”

Tommy doesn’t know. He takes his memories at face value because to do otherwise would be a slippery slope toward questioning everything, and Tommy isn’t sure he’s ready to do that.

“Do we?”

“Mmm,” Alex hums, “I remember you differently.”

“Maybe you just forgot,” Tommy says after a beat, because he doesn’t want to think about how he may or may not have changed since Alex last saw him. 

“Possible but not probable.”

He drags his hand over the center of Tommy’s chest and Tommy wills his heart not to speed up.

“Do you do that a lot?”

Tommy lets the words hang until they fill up the room, press up against the water stained ceiling and him down into the mattress. He could ignore it. He’s good at that, making it hard for himself to breathe but refusing to acknowledge it. He could play dumb or pretend he’s asleep or roll off the mattress and into the bathroom, push back against the weight of it.

“Yeah,” he says, ignoring the way he has to force the word out. 

Alex is quiet long enough that Tommy starts to feel like he’s hallucinated everything right down to finding Alex in a pub and Alex next to him in bed at this moment.

“I wanted to die.”

Tommy blinks at the ceiling. The water stains swim in and out of focus and he feels like he’s floating, Alex’s words prying him off the bed. 

“I thought it was the only way I could possibly do my part, you know? Coming home in one piece was the worst thing I could think of.”

Tommy’s eyes are burning and he still can’t make himself look at Alex. He doesn’t understand any of it, even though he feels that way now that he’s home. He can still remember how desperate he felt then, how he clung to his life so hard it made his fingers bleed and kept him up at night.

“Why?”

His voice sounds high and clear to his own ears and it’s all a bit like an out of body experience, like he’s staring down at them, Alex’s body dwarfing his on the mattress. Sheets crumpled at the foot of the bed and clothing in piles on the floor. His flat looking lived in for the first time. 

“Don’t really think we were meant to survive it, to be honest.”

That’s what makes Tommy turn and look at him, Alex’s eyes ringed with shadows and a spot forming off to the side on his forehead. He looks small for the first time and Tommy wonders how he didn’t see any of this when they met, just saw Alex as some kind of tsunami, crashing through and clinging to everything with the same desperation Tommy felt. 

“Why’d you think that?”

Tommy can’t imagine going in not thinking he was going to come out of it, not really. It all felt so far away, even when he was in it. Dying was something that happened to other people. War was something that happened to other people, until it happened to Tommy and he kissed his mother on the cheek and his lips came away wet with her tears when he said goodbye. 

Alex blinks at him, lips pursed, then blows out a breath. It’s warm against Tommy’s face and he forces himself to keep his eyes open. 

“Why’d you think otherwise? Felt like my whole neighborhood went and didn’t come back, so I just assumed I’d be the same. And it was sad, but everyone was proud, you know? Mums crying but standing up straight in the front pew at church every week like they’d done their part.”

He drops a kiss to Tommy’s shoulder, casual as anything, and Tommy doesn’t know how to respond to any of this, not the points of contact between their bodies or the words coming out of Alex’s mouth. 

Tommy’s lips feel numb and he’s acutely aware of the scratchy fabric of his sheets against his back. He feels like maybe he should be embarrassed that they aren’t nicer but he can’t find the energy. 

“Feels like all I can think about now is dying but all I could think about then was making it through the next second,” Tommy says, and Alex hums against his skin, lips tripping their way up to his neck.

“I felt like I didn’t deserve to come back,” Alex says, lips still pressed against the skin of his neck, “my mum cried, properly happy cried, but it took ages for me to be able to leave our flat without feeling like everyone was wondering why I made it back and so many other blokes didn’t.”

“D’you still feel like that?”

Half of Tommy wants him to say yes just so he won’t be alone in feeling like he doesn’t belong anymore. The other half of him knows it’s a foolish thought. 

“When I wake up in the middle of the night, sometimes. I forget where I am for a second. Otherwise I just try to pretend it didn’t happen. Don’t have any tattoos about it.”

Alex huffs out the last bit with a laugh and Tommy thinks that maybe they are the same, and that Alex is just better at forgetting. 

“I feel like I missed my chance,” Tommy says, and wishes he could take it back the second he’s said it.

“I mean,” Alex starts, then noses at the skin behind Tommy’s ear, “we’re all going to die, mate, don’t think you have to worry about missing that.”

Tommy doesn’t want to smile but he feels the corners of his lips curling up anyway. 

“Think this is the first time I’ve ever seen you smile,” Alex says, pulling back and tracing Tommy’s lips with his finger.

Tommy lets his lips part around it but Alex just lets it rest there, the lightest pressure on his lower lip. It’s grounding even though it brings him back to falling asleep on frozen sand and in uncomfortable train cars. 

“I’ve smiled a few times before now,” he says, and Alex replaces his finger with his thumb and drags it along Tommy’s bottom lip. 

“Maybe,” Alex drawls, “but I’ve never seen it.”

Tommy shrugs, his shoulder blades shifting against the sheets and it makes him realize just how tacky his skin is, from sweat and salt water and Alex all over him. 

“Doesn’t mean it’s never happened,” he says belatedly, wincing as he tries to get comfortable.

“Can I run you a bath?”

Alex moves in close again, dragging his hand down Tommy’s arm like he can’t stop touching him. Tommy thinks back to that morning, to Alex walking in on him, his body cold and shriveled. He bites at his bottom lip but it doesn’t replace the feeling of Alex’s thumb. 

“Okay,” he says, leaning into Alex’s touch because he’s far enough gone that it doesn’t really matter anymore.

“Okay,” Alex repeats, soft and quiet and he sounds happy, like he’s won something. 

He presses a kiss against Tommy’s shoulder and then rolls off the mattress, sets it squeaking and pads naked to the bathroom. 

Tommy listens to him turn on the water and thinks of all the times he laid on the bathroom floor and just let it run and willed it to lull him to sleep. He thinks about Alex in his bathtub, Alex’s skin underwater and the lines of his body warped and alien. 

“C’mon,” Alex says from the doorway after a few minutes, just like he had when he dragged Tommy up off the sand. 

Tommy gets up slowly. His body feels sore and used in a way it hasn’t in a long time. Maybe ever, if he thinks about it. Alex waits for him and circles his hand around Tommy’s bicep and Tommy lets himself lean into the touch. 

The bathroom feels humid and the mirror over the sink is fogged up and Tommy shivers at the thought of how hot Alex must’ve run the water. He stands dumbly in front of the bathtub for a minute. There’s a small streak of sand by the drain and Tommy wonders if he could use it as an excuse to back out.

“Figured you needed a hot bath,” Alex says from behind him, and Tommy can feel it when he moves in, the way his hand hovers above his shoulder blades before he presses it flat against Tommy’s skin, “you still feel a bit cold to the touch.”

Tommy feels himself nodding but can’t make himself get in. It’s much easier to let the heat of the bathroom swallow him up.

“D’you want to get in?”

Alex’s voice is quiet, like he’s trying not to spook Tommy. Like one wrong move might send him running back to the beach, and Tommy hasn’t quite ruled that out yet. 

“Okay,” he croaks, and takes a step forward, Alex’s hand steady and warm on his back. 

“There you go,” Alex whispers when he gets one leg in, the water burning his skin and making him break out in a sweat. 

Alex lets his hand fall but finds Tommy’s hand a second later. He grips it tightly, threading his fingers through Tommy’s and steadies him as he swings his other leg over the rim of the bathtub. He feels taller than Alex like this. The bathtub is separating them but Alex’s hand still heavy in his, drawing circles on the back of Tommy’s palm with his thumb.

It takes him ages to sink down. He goes centimeter by centimeter and thinks about how he’s always waiting for the water to suck him in and hoping it doesn’t spit it back out. But now, his skin tacky and his body warming up, he can feel the itch of hesitation at the back of his brain. It’s not the desperation he felt before, not cold fear zipping through his veins, just a question. 

Alex lets go of his hand when he sinks into the water. He leans back and the water laps at his chest and Tommy never wants to get out now that he’s gotten in. 

“How’s it feel? Good?”

Tommy blinks. Alex is crouched next to the bathtub when he looks over, his hair curling wildly and sweat starting to bead on his forehead. 

“There’s room,” he hears himself saying, moving forward and making space for Alex. The water’s swirling and it feels familiar and strange, the heat of it not what Tommy’s used to.

Alex’s lips part and he sucks in a breath but doesn’t say anything. Tommy waits. He waits long enough that the water settles again and the surface of it is still, his own body motionless and leeching heat. 

“Okay,” he exhales, easing to his feet and towering over Tommy.

He’s so close that Tommy could count the individual hairs on his legs but then he’s moving, slipping in behind Tommy, his arms sliding around Tommy’s waist and pulling him in. His chest is warm against Tommy’s back and he draws little circles on Tommy’s hips, his thumbs warped underwater.

“Thanks,” Tommy says, breaking the quiet and tipping his head back to rest on Alex’s shoulder. 

He feels Alex’s chin on the top of his head and he pulls Tommy even closer, their bodies melded together underwater. Tommy can still feel the ache of him, the drag that was too much and not enough. He hopes he’ll still be able to feel it tomorrow, that he’ll be able to focus on that and not the burn blistering his chin.

-

Alex leaves eventually. He leaves but he comes back, smiles at Tommy from the other side of the counter at work every Wednesday. 

He sits in the surf with Tommy every Thursday and never says anything, just radiates heat beside him and runs a bath for them after.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [here](http://polaroidgirlfriend.tumblr.com) on tumblr.


End file.
